>>poor MBox performance! is this normal?

[megahurt]

I am using an MBox on a TiBook 1GHz, w/ 1 GB of ram.

The session has less than the 32 allowed tracks (maybe around 20 or so), and is playing along w/ Reason. I'm using a handful of my normal plugins. When the buffer is jacked all the way up it plays fine, but it fails to bounce down. It gives me some [bleep] about the bounce handler sucking too bad to keep up. I have to go into my session and mute out tracks and turn off plugins to get it to complete.

Now, I have been running PT5 on my G4/400 w/ 768 MB of ram up until recently, and have often had sessions with 32 tracks and more plugins than I am using on this session, with success.

What am I doing wrong here? Is it user error, or does this MBox/PT 6 system just really blow?

I want to use PT6 simply because it is easy to work w/ Reason that way, instead of always switching between them like I have to in OS 9. But if this is the performance I can expect, eff that.

[Slim Shady]

Well, having Reason open is definitely eating a lot of your CPU - it's a whole separate application to have open you know, not just another plug-in, plus there's the extra tasks of bussing the audio to PT. You should bounce your Reason tracks into ProTools as soon as you finalize them so that you can quit out of Reason and get some of your CPU back (and get rid of the latency!) - I don't know why you'd want to try to do a bounce with Reason still open, you're just asking for trouble.

That being said however, if you're using PT 6.1.1 or 6.1.2, you're going to have problems with bouncing to disk with the Mbox, it's a known bug. Upgrade to 6.2.2 (and Panther) or downgrade to PT 6.1

[megahurt]

I am using Panther and 6.2.2.

Bouncing down my Reason tracks and importing into PT is exactly what I do in OS 9, and exactly what I wanted to get away from. I thought version 6 w/ Rewire was my solution, but I guess not.

This sucks... I can't believe that my 4 year old G4/400 is at least as good, if not better for this than the 1GHz PowerBook. What a huge waste of cash.

[Avid]

I looked at your other posts, and didn't see you mention an external audio drive on any of them. If you're trying to do all this on just your internal PowerBook drive, you're definitely going to run into performance problems.

Although you shouldn't record large sessions to your startup drive on any system ( www.digidesign.com/compato ) it is particularly a problem on laptops which generally have a 4400 or at best 5400 RPM stock internal drive. Your G4 system drive was either a 5400 or 7200 RPM drive, so it will outperform the laptop, even with a faster processor on the laptop.

Get yourself a dedicated external 7200 RPM Oxford 911 FireWire drive and you will see much better performance than using the system drive.

[megahurt]

Sorry for not mentioning it, but I have been running the session (as usual) off a 120 GB ClubMac FireWire drive, 7200, Oxford 911.

So umm... as for the "Get yourself a dedicated external 7200 RPM Oxford 911 FireWire drive and you will see much better performance than using the system drive"... I call BS on this one. Cuz that is exactly what I've been doing and it still sux.

[Slim Shady]

Well mister cheery pants, since you've got a Tibook, why not just go back to OS9? - you have the option. I use a 1ghz TiBook with Mbox, and get better performance in OSX than I did in OS9 (just a little, but noticable) and I also get better performance than my friend with a G4/733 powermac, but your milage may vary. As I mentioned before though, I would never dream of leaving Reason open when doing a bounce - I view Reason/Rewire as a nice tool for composition, but you're mad for leaving it open in the background all the time - open it, use it, bounce it to audio, close it, done. I can get maybe half my normal plug-in count if I have Reason open, probably less, which is why it's never up and running for more than 10 minutes if I'm working in PT. Logic seems to handle it a little better, but then again Logic is much more powerful when it comes to plug-in count anyway in my experience.

[Mark Williams]

I'm with Slim on this one.
It seems like the fact that you're trying to bounce with Reason still open could be the problem.
You're trying to run two intensive audio programs at the same time AND bounce-to-disk.

The ReWire thing is great in PT 6, and you're still getting all the features (in terms of being able to change parameters in Reason while in your PT session), you just have to render those Reason tracks once you've got them sitting in the mix how you want them.

I'd love to hear how your performance changes if you try this method.
Maybe it'll work great, maybe it won't. But I'd definitely be curious to hear.
I'd like to pick up a laptop myself...

mark

[megahurt]

I understand, and it makes total sense that I will in fact get better performance without reason open. But of course, I already had that going $4,000 ago. Thanks for the input. It's just diappointing.